Elegy
by Scarabbug
Summary: SPOILERS for The End of Time part II. An interesting thing about humans is how they use moments like this to say goodbye. To everyone. Even the people they didn't really like that much in the first place. He’s always been fond of humans. One shot.


**It may be noticable by now, that many of those who dabble in Dr Who fanfiction are trying to turn out _something_ as a coping strategy for "_The End of Time part II_". **

**Far be it from me to deviate from a perfectly workable strategem. Spoilers for _The End of Time_. Standard disclaimers apply. Now, if you'll excuse me I'm going to go and be sad for a little while. **

* * *

_"You're born then you die, it's all gone in a minute  
I ain't looking back, 'cause I don't want to miss it  
You better live now because no one's going to get out alive."_

- Bon Jovi, (Can I Be) Happy Now?

Elegy.

He remembers everything. He's a Time lord. Remembering is what they do, forwards, backwards and in loops of causality and paradox which would seem senseless and random to anybody else. Anybody who's never had the vortex in their heads, anyway. And the Time Vortex isn't _meant_ to be looked into. It's the original Pandora's Box, so far as humans can understand it and really, they _can't_, because their brains are just too small for it. They're giants who can't quite see the answers that're hanging around just beneath them_. _

The vortex... Time is splintering across everything in thin shards, and then there's _Rose_. All gold and light and with the pain of the vortex in her mind. And okay, that one isn't one of _his_ memories. Not really. But it's close enough not to matter to who he was and who he is right _now_, right here, _still alive, both hearts beating hard._ He's listening to the echo of the song, like something out of human history that was too powerful to just put in books and leave lying around, so people sang about it instead and hoped that somebody _somewhere_ would understand. The Ood sing for him because it's all they can do; they don't know how else to do this, how else to say goodbye...

And he doesn't _want_ to say goodbye. He shouldn't _have_ to. It isn't _fair_. And somehow, in some strange, distant way, the universe would hear that plea and say "oh, isn't it? Sorry." And that was that. Still, it's a part of that same universe which is singing for him right now, so he supposes he shouldn't complain _too_ much.

When he pauses to throw aside his coat, he remembers more.

He remembers choosing it in the first place. It's a big wardrobe, there are a _lot_ of coats in there but he'd known soon enough that it was _that_ one right _there_, just as he'd known Rose would smile when she saw it and her mother would stand and blink and then she'd smile as well. Humans have sayings about this sort of thing, don't they? About how you always remember the really stupid, _stupid_ things, like whether or not you fed the cat (not that he'd ever had a cat) or paid the milkman or took the keys out of the TARDIS before you left...

...Not that last one. just ignore that last one.

Another interesting thing about humans is that they like to use moments like this to say goodbye. To everyone. Even the people they didn't really _like_ that much in the first place. Still, _everyone_... okay, so that's going to be a little tricky, actually, because it's not as if he's got all the time in the universe anymore, is it? And yet you still can't _rush_ these things, because racing from one place to the next desperately trying to track everyone down wouldn't be saying _goodbye_, it would be filling in a checklist. He _hates_ checklists. He really hopes the next him has the same slight aversion to orderliness. So he'll have to be selective, choose his times, places and people very carefully, making sure that nobody is left out. It won't be much of a proper reward if he gets to his last few seconds and realises he's left somebody out.

So anyway he goes to see Rose, and she thinks he's been drinking which is just typical but also kind of true, and he tells her she'll have a great year; that's true as well, repeated near brushes with death aside. She's about to have the best year of her life. It's going to be so different for her from here on out.

He remembers Martha because she was next. She came after Rose and that hurt her, because she never understood that it wasn't important, and that there have been so many of them in the past, so many companions and friends and some of them have even died, and didn't she understand that each of them meant just as much as the last? That he loved every. Single. One of them?

Well, maybe Martha understood after all, because she'd realised in the end, she _knew_ that sooner or later, _everybody_ left. Everybody. Even him. She realises that same fact yet again, the moment they see him standing on the balcony after he'd just saved their lives for the seven millionth time. It doesn't matter who came before. He remembers seeing her and Mickey; scared and married and busy and _happy_ and _freelance_, which meant that they probably couldn't afford to blow things up with any regularity. Not like someone _else_ he knows. And that's who he remembers next: he remembers Jack, and in that memory he scribbles a note and hands it to a waiter. When Jack looks up and sees him standing on the other side of a crowded bar, he doesn't move. He doesn't run to him the way he did the last time. He just looks to his side and says Alonso's name and... there –that's another loose end tied up, thanks very much.

He remembers the Master. All that age and anger and condensed madness, the sound like a double heartbeat at the end of time, the one that he'd gotten so _completely_ wrong.

...No need to remember _him_, maybe. He'll be back. He won't ever die because he doesn't want to enough. He doesn't know whether that thought is terrifying or reassuring and either way it doesn't matter anymore.

He remembers Donna, and that one _really_ hurts, because she doesn't know. She can't. He's _dying_ and she won't remember him or who he was, and you can't really say goodbye to somebody who's never met you. No, you just hand them a winning lottery ticket and look at somebody young enough to be your great great great great great-something grandson and who you kind of wish was your dad. He remembers that he's dying for this old man, and that the old man knows it; he's just pretending that he doesn't so his not-really-son can walk away with his dignity and pain and ithurts. He can't even breathe around it anymore ithurtssomuch -

No. Stop. Remember. Ignore the pain and just remember, because there's still so much left, so much he needs to see, because there's Astrid, rising into the heavens and flying, Harriet Jones who changed the world in two completely different ways, and there's Mr Copper and Jenny and the Doctor who invited him for dinner, and Laszlo and Tallulah and a women who was his wife once and who was _happy_, just like he hoped she'd be. He was worried about that one for a while, because there's somebody else who died, isn't there? There's poor old John Smith who went away so he could come back and _sorry_, _John this probably isn't what you had in mind, but I got the book at least, got it signed and everything and I'll leave it somewhere really obvious, where he can't miss it. I'll _make_ the next me remember if I have to, don't you worry about that_. And this is only the beginning, just the latest out of hundreds of years of friends and _family_. The biggest family of anyone. Sarah Jane was right all along...

He remembers dragging a boy away from an oncoming car (why is it _always_ an oncoming car, or a truck, or a space ship that looks like the _Titanic_ or something else equally simple and stupid?) She named him Luke, the boy grown from nothing and who looks at him now the same way he did that one time inside the TARDIS after his mother's almost-wedding. There's a connection there which probably comes along with being two people so out of place in the world. Then he _sees_ her, he sees Sarah Jane and he _remembers_ Sarah Jane so, _so_ well. He doesn't have to say anything to her because she _knows_, probably even better than Martha does. She knows this is the last time they're ever going to see one another, and she's good enough to smile about it, too. That's Sarah Jane for you. That's how Sarah Jane says goodbye these days, and he knows she was telling the truth when she promised him that she'd never forget. _Nobody will _ever_ forget you._

It almost makes up for this.

Almost.

Because he's done everything right. He's been everywhere he knows he had to go, he's seen them all that one last time. He's taken his reward, and now the only reward left for him is to die, and he doesn't want that, because he's _scared_. For the first time in his life he doesn't know what happens next, or at least how to _change_ what happens next, and he doesn't want to go. He's dying, and he doesn't want to go. The Oods' song is ending now, fading away into the whisper of the vortex. But _they_ were right as well, weren't they? It never ends. Not really.

Funny how it's taken him nearly a _thousand years_ to work that one out.

He thinks about a question he never answered, because it didn't need saying. _'Yes... were you?'_

The answer to this question helps; it crushes the pain just a little as the fire inside of him begins again, burning through his cells. They're _there_, and knowing that gives him enough willpower to go home again. All of them. They're _always_ there. He takes a deep breath and let's it out again. He listens to the song of the Ood somewhere behind his hearts. He tells himself that he isn't gone. He'll never be gone. He lives inside of them.

It kind of works.

* * *

**Homages and gacks: **

**This phrase: "_And somewhere the universe would hear that plea and say "oh, isn't it? Sorry_." _And that was that_, was inspired by a line in Terry Pratchett's "_Soul Music_". If you're going to borrow, then borrowfrom the best.**

**And this one: "_He takes a deep breath and let's it out again. He listens to the song of the Ood somewhere behind his hearts. He tells himself that he isn't gone. He'll never be gone. He lives inside of them"_ was inspired by a line at the end of thebiography of John Thaw, _The Two of Us_, as written by his wife. **


End file.
